


East and West

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blindness, Curses, Dark Magic, F/M, Magic Realism, Secret Relationship, Voodoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a case in New Orleans, the team encounters a voodoo practitioner who curses them. As a result, Reid wakes up next to a stranger in his bed every night whom he is not allowed to look upon or question on pain of death. This story came from a magical realism prompt in the comment_fic community on livejournal. It is (very) loosely based on the Norwegian fairytale, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon".</p><p>This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. The story contains graphic sexual content, violence, and mature themes - it should not be read by those under the age of 18.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story covers approximately a year and a half, and some of the time breaks are abrupt. I have broken up the story into chapters in order to reflect the passage of time - they are sort of a visual 'break' for the reader - at least, I hope that it works out that way. Some breaks may be months, and others only a few days. I hope that it won't be too confusing, but if it is, I apologize in advance.

They all just stood there while the old woman cursed them. No one made a move to silence her, no one tried to talk her down - perhaps no one really believed her in the first place. It was all just part of the New Orleans flavor. But thinking back on it, he recalled the stony looks on the detectives’ faces, how none of them would touch her until she had said her peace. They knew better than to dismiss that old power outright. He wished that he had been that wise.

“Y’all is cursed.” She spat and let her gnarled finger wash over them. “Cursed to be separated from de one you love, just as you take my Samedi from me. Let you ne’er have a moment’s pleasure without regret again!”

“Your Samedi killed eight people…” Reid said.

“He a man of _faith_ , boy. Faith call for de sacrifice of blood. You don’t know no sacrifice - not yet. But you will. Before you end, boy, you be sacrificing your love.”

“I’m not in love.” He said it before he could stop himself.

“Den you feel de pain de most, chere.” She smiled. “When she come to you - if you look upon her, she die. If you try to discover her, she die. If you try to break de curse - find some magic to work on me - she wither and burn like fruit on a poisoned tree. She will know you but can never say nothing. But you - you won’t know her - won’t recognize her if you pass on de street…”

The crone sprang forward and ran her hand quickly down his cheek. “She will live in silence and despair and you will live in ignorance and fear. Enjoy your life, boy - enjoy a long life with dat you most want within reach but always beyond you!”

He remembered the feel of Morgan’s hand on his arm pulling him away with the rest of the team. The old woman laughed with such force that it seemed like a bomb trying to explode from her chest. She turned suddenly and the NOPD detectives scattered like dry leaves in the wind, happy to let her pass if it meant that she would never return. Perhaps that should’ve made him wary, but he still didn’t believe.

“Voodoo superstition’s in the air down here.” Morgan grumbled. “Can’t wait to get back to D.C. and the brand of crazy that I understand.”

\-----

Reid got home late. The plane, paperwork, traffic… the New Orleans case had been exhausting. He stripped down carelessly and raced to get into bed after he turned out the lights. After all of these years, he still didn’t like the dark. He closed his eyes and immediately felt safer - the darkness _here_ was his own, it was home - and it wasn’t long before his body uncurled and drifted.

The mattress sank under a new weight and his body came alive as some sense told him that the room temperature had altered. He heard a shocked intake of breath and realized that he was holding his.

He leapt from the bed and fumbled through the pile of clothes in the dark until his fingers found the butt of his .38. He rolled onto his back on the floor and pointed the gun at the bed in the darkness. He pointed it _at the figure_ in his bed in the darkness…

“Don’t move!”

The silhouette began to flail and fell backwards. It made a sickly gurgling sound that was scarier than anything he’d ever heard before. He rose to his knees and tried to steady his hands.

“Freeze! I’m armed!”

The gurgling increased and he heard skin clawing at sheets. 

“Stop it, okay? I’m gonna shoot you!”

“See… me…” The voice was a whisper scratching through muscle and flesh for air.

“What?”

“DON’T… SEE…”

_When she come to you - if you look upon her, she die._

He blinked and then was set in motion again. Scrambling through the clothes behind him, he found a tie. He dropped his gun and tied the fabric so tightly over his eyes he felt bruised. The room was silent except for the gradual evening of breath and the creak of bedsprings as someone rolled to their side. He had to wait a long time before he could make himself speak. 

“You okay?”

He heard a wheeze and then ‘better’ from the far end of the bed. He just sat on the floor, blindfolded and stupefied, as his visitor coughed into the sheets. Eventually, he heard a soft, wet curse, and just like that, he was a believer.


	2. Chapter 2

Whoever she was, she knew the rules. At first she refused to speak at all but he had too many questions and she eventually broke her silence in order to tell him to shut up. She spoke briefly and only in whispers. She said that she had no memory of arriving at his apartment, only a strange pulling sensation that ripped her from where she was and deposited her in his room. She tried to leave only to discover that every door out led directly back into Reid’s bedroom. He asked what it felt like when he looked at her. She shifted on the edge of the bed and cleared her throat a few times.

“Like strangulation… and… as if my lungs were filling with sand.”

He touched the tie across his eyes. Losing this one sense frightened him - he depended on it for so much. He didn’t know that he could trust her and he felt vulnerable here, in the one place that should always feel safe. They were going to need trust in order to solve this… if only he knew who she was…

“Stop doing that.” She whispered.

“What?”

“If you find out, I’ll die. Your curiosity isn’t worth more than my life. I can feel you doing it, so just… _don’t_ , okay?”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever. Let’s just get some sleep and try to figure this out in the morning.”

He heard the bedsprings as she lay down on the far side of the mattress. He sat on the other edge in his forced darkness and quietly freaked out.

“Spencer,” She sighed. “Lie down. I promise that I won’t touch you and we can sort this out in the morning.”

But they didn’t because when he woke up, she was gone.

\---

He went to work and acted normal. He was fairly sure that he couldn’t tell anyone about it or his mystery guest would die - wherever she was. He tried not to imagine this woman wandering through her day and suddenly collapsing, choking on his unwitting, unseen hands. Besides, who would believe a story like that anyway?

The team caught a case and they flew to Missouri. For four nights he slept in a hotel bed alone. He had almost convinced himself that he had imagined it all. He postulated theories of schizophrenic hallucinations, opiate flashbacks, or even an atypical psychological reaction to above average work stress. While these led to a host of other concerns, it was all better than being cursed. Superstitions were illogical and he had no tools for coping with the irrational.

His first night home, he stayed up late engrossed in a comparative study of Caribbean-based naturalistic faith systems, and did not stumble to bed until nearly 2 a.m. No sooner had he closed his eyes then he heard the sheets rustle as someone rolled next to him. There was muffled breathing as if someone was waking from sleep, then a frightened gasp.

“Fuck!”

He was up and out of the bed, hand clamped over his eyes as he fumbled around until he felt a scarf. He tied it over his face quickly and then sank into the chair next to the bed.

“I thought… I thought that I had dreamed it…” he mumbled.

All he heard was someone struggling against the sheets and then a determined pacing along the far wall of his bedroom.

“Fuck.” Her whisper was small and sad, and for the first time in a long time he wanted to tell someone that he knew _exactly_ how they felt.


	3. Chapter 3

She appeared every night for a month. The moment that he closed his eyes, she was ripped from whatever she was doing and ended up next to him. Once, she told him, she had been at the movies with a girlfriend. She even held a handful of popcorn to prove it. He tried to postpone sleeping as late as he could after that so that she would have less to explain in her waking life. She tried not to say much but he could feel her frustration growing with each visit. He apologized profusely and repeatedly; he didn’t understand how she could have been pulled into this since he didn’t know her and he didn’t have a romantic connection to anyone.

“This isn’t your fault, Spencer.” She wheezed - a warning that he was straying dangerously close to forbidden territory. “It’s a curse - you don’t have any control over it.”

But it was his fault and he knew that she blamed him no matter how she tried to convince him otherwise.

“I wonder if this is happening to anyone else… from my team, I mean…”

She took a long time to respond. “Probably not. The rest of them don’t have anyone, right?”

“Neither did I, until you appeared…”


	4. Chapter 4

He sat on the edge of the bed and fingered the tip of his sleeping mask. Even after four months, he still hated putting it on. It made his personal darkness a weapon to be wielded by another against him. It was no longer his choice, his refuge against the _actual_ monsters that he knew existed. If he shrugged off it’s enforcement, he’d kill her. This stranger that he slept next to every night. This woman who knew him but could say nothing about herself. He trusted her based on nothing more than their mutual imprisonment and the vague whisper in his mind that said if she was a part of this, she must mean something to him. The thought made him feel strangely electric. The possibility of _something_ \- a connection worthy of cursing - was intoxicating. But one had to believe in the curse, and all of it’s doomed finality, in order to believe the possibility. So, every night he faced his fear of the dark so that she could live one more day.

He turned out the light, put on his mask, and lay down. Within a handful of heartbeats she was there, suddenly writhing and crying out as if in pain.

“Are you okay?”

He reached out for her and grabbed her arm, brushing her side… brushing _the skin_ of her side. She gasped and rolled towards him, and he felt the warmth of her breast pressing against his hand. He yanked his hand away.

“Wha-…” She mumbled, breathing hard, and then let out a keening moan that was both sad and enraged at the same time. “Oh, come ON!”

He felt as much as heard her tear the sheets away and jump out of the bed. Her footfalls fell hurriedly in one direction, then stopped and came back again. He smelled perfume - something she didn’t wear often - and an undercurrent of musk. His stomach curdled at the combination and the sensation outweighed his shock.

“Were you on a date?” He asked quietly.

“What? None of your…” She stopped herself before she could finish.

“Were you having sex?”

Her silence twisted him around. It was the only time since this whole thing began that he was glad that he couldn’t see her.

“There are some old t-shirts and stuff in the bottom drawer.” He pointed in the general direction of his bureau, his mouth dry. “Something might fit…”

He heard her rip open the drawer and root through his things. A moment later, the mattress dipped and the sheets were drawn tight as she covered herself. Given that he could barely feel her body heat, she must have been perched right on the edge of the bed.

“I’m so sorry.” He sighed. He was perpetually apologizing; even he was getting sick of it.

When she whispered, he felt her shaking and heard the tears in her voice. “You’re the genius… just figure this out already!”

\----

He had Garcia start searching for Samedi LeGris’s wife. He tried not to think about how his intellect recoiled at believing in voodoo enslavement. The truth was that it was manifestly possible and two real people were being made miserable as a result. The effects of the curse were real, so there had to be a real way of undoing it. If he had to, he’d go to the old crone and offer her whatever she demanded in order to be free.

“Hey, wasn’t that the old bat who cursed you all out in the NOPD squad room? Jesus, that ‘Serpent and the Rainbow’ stuff really curls my pink-lacquered toes, ya know? I wouldn’t be able to sleep for the heebie-jeebies…”

“Yeah, I know.” He sighed. “I really need to find her though.”

“Okay, Doctor Gorgeous, but it’s gonna take a while. So far the only record I’ve found is a wedding license in a backwater parish registry. No social security, no bank records, no taxes paid, no Medicare receipts, no driver’s license, no rental agreements or deeds of ownership… this one is waaaaay off the grid. It might be worth considering that the Font of All Digital Knowledge is not your best option here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Seems to me that a character like this would be sorta a local legend. You need boots on the ground for this one.”

“New Orleans police…” He mumbled.

“It’s a place to start.”

\----

They hadn’t spoken since the night that she appeared naked. He decided that he would have to bridge the gulf. He was going to free her and he wanted to give her that hope if nothing else.

“I have people looking for Samedi’s wife.” He rolled to face her direction even though he wore his blindfold. “I’ll find her, and when I do, I’ll get her to lift the curse. No matter what it takes.”

He felt her turn towards him but she remained silent.

“You shouldn’t be here. I don’t know who you are and you don’t love me… It doesn’t make any sense that you are a part of this.”

“And it makes sense that _you are_?” She whispered. “You don’t deserve this either, Spencer.”

“But it’s destroying _your life_. I’m confused and bewildered, but my life is pretty much as it’s always been. I won’t have you sacrifice yourself for someone you don’t care about…”

“Who says that I don’t care?”

He lay facing her in silence for a long time.

“We knew each other. _Before_ New Orleans, didn’t we?”

She began to wheeze. “Don’t…”

“Please… just a little information…”

“Yes,” Her voice became a rasp. “We’ve known each other a while. We-we’re friends…”

Her voice cracked and she began to cough. He reached out and held her by her arms, squeezing them gently until her fit passed.

“Okay. Then as your friend, I’m gonna do whatever I have to. And _you_ are going to do whatever you have to in order to block the last several months from your memory when this is over. You’ll go back to your life - you’ll never tell me and I’ll never know.”

She said nothing but he heard her sigh. Then she reached out and brushed the back of her fingers along his cheekbone. Flipping her hand, she held his face in the warmth of her palm.

“As if I could forget that sort of sacrifice…”


	5. Chapter 5

Winter came and it was a brutal one. The heating in his apartment had always been hit-or-miss but with record-setting lows and snow accumulations, it bottomed out and his landlord seemed disinclined to overhaul a fifty year old steam rad system no matter how much his tenants complained. He bought extra blankets and a space heater, but he imagined that some nights he might be able to see his breath. If he hadn’t been blindfolded.

She couldn’t control when she showed up, so he’d bought her some clothes for those occasions when she was dressed inappropriately. Fortunately, they had never had a reprise of the mid-intercourse appearance. Neither one of them mentioned it but he thought about it more than he should. He wondered if she had stopped dating, or if she was just being more careful. He closed his eyes and when she arrived she let out a whoop that he’d never heard before.

“Christ, it’s cold in here!”

He reached over just as she swiveled out of bed. Her hair brushed his hand and left a wet smear.

“Are you… wet?”

“I was in the shower.” Her voice came from across the room. She was probably going through the drawer that he had designated as ‘hers’.

“I’m sorry. I thought that I’d waited long enough…”

“N-not your fault. I p-pushed it t-too late. Y-you should r-report your l-landlord… this heat t-thing is c-criminal!”

He was out of bed and moving in an instant. He had a perfect map of the room in his mind and had become used to navigating it blindfolded. He found the space heater and put it on high, then he went into his ensuite bathroom. He walked to her side of the bed and held out a towel to her.

“For your hair.”

She took it with whispered thanks. As he went back to his side of the bed, he grabbed a throw blanket from the chair and laid it out on top of the comforter. He climbed under the blankets while she toweled her head viciously. Then he heard the towel drop and she burrowed into the blankets next to him.

“Better?”

She made a non-committal noise, but he felt the bed start to vibrate as she shivered. 

“I w-wish that this c-curse thing worked out so that you’d have to show up at m-my place when the weather got bad.”

“That might make anonymity a bit difficult.” He smiled. “Not to mention making it hard to find my way home in the morning - since I don’t know where you live.”

“You’d get home the same way that you arrived - by bamfing there.”

“Bamfing?”

She hesitated. “Like N-Nightcrawler. He’s a teleporting mutant from-”

“I know what bamfing is. I’m just surprised that you do.” His stomach did an unexpected flip. “I also never knew how you left each morning.”

“Oh. Well, y-yeah… I leave the same way I arrive. Sometimes I do it in my s-sleep and wake up in my own bed. It’s w-weird.”

He wanted to extend the conversation but he didn’t know how. It was surprisingly casual and intimate. It also gave him more information and that was something for which his mind constantly craved.

“So, you like comics.”

“Don’t.” She warned.

“Is your throat closing? Are you finding it hard to breathe? I don’t think that we’re breaking any rules by getting to know a few things about one another. After all, it seems like you know _everything_ about me…”

She sighed. “Yeah, I l-like comics. I also like sci-fi and m-movies, specifically h-horror movies…”

“Wow.” He chuckled. “At least now I know why we’re friends… what kind of horror movies?”

“The cheesier the better.”

“Maybe you’re my twin…”

“God, I hope not. I’ve heard about your ‘Evil Twin, Eviler Twin’ theory…” She was laughing now.

His mind suddenly started listing possible candidates. She was a geek, she knew about his work, she knew the team, she had knowledge of situations that went back years… She grabbed the front of his shirt and he became aware that her breath was rattling in her throat.

“S-Spencer!”

“Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… sometimes I can’t stop myself from thinking.”

He shushed her and rubbed the hands that held his shirt until her breathing eased. He had to find a way out of this mess. The more he came to know her, the more he was convinced that he had missed an invaluable opportunity. How could he have ignored this person? Why had he not fallen for her the moment they met? He had to save them if only to have a chance to redress these oversights. Unfortunately, Garcia’s searches had turned up nothing and NOPD had hit a brick wall. One detective he’d spoken to told him that looking for an old creepy voodoo woman in Louisiana was like looking for a specific piece of hay in a very large haystack. He couldn’t help but read the subtext of that statement: no one wants to find a creepy voodoo practitioner. He felt her fingers trace up his cheek and it brought him back to the present.

“You’ll find her.”

He shook his head. He didn’t know how he would, and he didn’t know why he merited her faith in him. But he decided that it wasn’t worth talking about just in case it brought on another attack. 

“You t-think too much, Spence. S-spend too much time inside your head…”

“It’s sorta what I’m known for…”

“But i-it’s not everything. You n-need to act… to f-feel. That’s LeGris’s power… the r-rational and irrational walking through life t-together side by side.”

His thumb skimmed over her shaking hands. Smooth and both warm and cool like silk, giving way to callused fingertips and the edge of a ruined nail. She tried to pull them away but he held her still. He wasn’t thinking of her so much as thinking about the complexity of what she proposed. Her hands alone told a complicated story; one that he didn’t understand. And those were just her hands. How could he hope to unravel LeGris’s world if he was blind in it? He cringed and reflexively tried to hide his blindfolded eyes from her.

“I can’t.”

“You’ve already s-started.” Her breath brushed his cheek. “Every n-night a nyctophobic, haphephobic, paranoid profiler lies b-blindfolded next to a stranger and c-comforts her.”

He looked up to where he imagined her eyes would be. The blackness was absolute but for the first time he didn’t see it as a void, but instead a swirling hoard of possibility waiting to be defined. 

“I think the term ‘paranoid’ is a bit harsh…”

His hand pushed into the chaos and brushed the edge of her collarbone. It followed a soft trail upwards - a strand of hair - looping it’s length around his finger. What colour was it? It would define her in one way, but would it alter what he knew about her already? The lock of hair vibrated against his fingers.

“S-Spencer?” Her whisper seemed very close. “W-Would it be okay if I… if I s-slept closer? I-I’m still pretty c-cold…”

He opened his mouth but his voice failed him so he just nodded instead. He lay very still as she scooted closer and curled herself into his chest. Almost immediately their combined body heat radiated over both of them. His arms closed around her without his permission and even after she stopped shivering, they still held firm. Under the blindfold he was wide awake as he listened to every breath, every whisper of the bed sheets waiting for her to pull away. He must have lay there for over an hour, taunt as a bowstring, holding his stranger close. In time, he realized that she was asleep and relaxed a little. She shifted in his arms and he held his breath, but all she did was curl her fingers into his shirt more tightly before drifting off again.


	6. Chapter 6

After that night, they always slept curled around one another. It wasn’t easy for him - and he got considerably less sleep as a result - but he didn’t find it unpleasant. She was better at it than he was: more subtle and patient than he could ever be. He often jumped or twitched when she first touched him but she never seemed frustrated by it and never addressed it with him. She just persisted.

He found himself telling her about his cases - something he wasn’t permitted to do outside of B.A.U. team members. He didn’t care - for all he knew she could’ve been an agent or a police officer. She didn’t seem horrified or overly disgusted by the details, nor was she morbidly curious about the killers and victims as many crime fans could be. She kept her responses guarded; no doubt worried about how her answers might give her away, but she encouraged him to speak.

He started to miss her when he went away on a case. For some reason, the curse didn’t work when he was out of state. He went to bed alone and woke alone without fail, and slowly he realized that he missed the reassuring weight of her in his arms. He wondered what she did on those nights. Did she feel relieved? Sometimes he knew in advance when he was leaving and told her so, but often it was last minute and he had no way of contacting her. He wondered if she worried. He wondered whether she thought about him getting injured or dying in the field and how it might affect the curse. Some of those nights he wore the blindfold even though it was unnecessary, but he always felt closed in, suffocating in the blackness. He would rip it off, hyperventilating at the memory of the contracting solitude. He was still afraid of the dark, he concluded, it just didn’t seem so frightening if you were in it with someone else.

After a planned absence - a custodial interview in Montana - he switched flights and came home early. He knew that he was being foolish, but he didn’t care. The day meant something to him and you mark important days even if their significance is convoluted. The update from Garcia and NOPD had been more of the same - a big nothing - but he was making a promise tonight that he intended to keep. This time next year, they’d be free. He wouldn’t tell her this promise; he just made it in his mind, in her honor. She could know after the fact… He made his preparations quickly and then tried to calm himself before donning his sleeping mask and closing his eyes.

“Ouch! What the-”

He smiled to himself.

“Spencer, what have you done to this pillow?”

“It’s a rose. Happy anniversary.”

The room went quiet long enough for him to wonder if he had done it all wrong.

“So, it’s been a year since we were cursed and involuntarily shoved into each other’s lives which we cannot alter on pain of death, and you decide to celebrate this by booby trapping my side of the bed with some spiky flowers? Is that right?”

“It’s one flower actually.”

“Right.”

He listened to her huff and then walk towards his bathroom. The water turned on briefly and then he heard her walk back to the bed. Something made a tink sound as it met the bedside table. A glass. With water for the rose. He smiled and didn’t try to disguise it.

“What are you so happy about?”

“I think that you’re starting to like me.”

\----

He felt her arrive but didn’t turn towards her.

“Hey.” She whispered.

He mumbled and shifted his shoulders trying to feign drowsiness. She didn’t seem to buy his act as she moved closer and he felt her breath against the back of his neck.

“You can’t be asleep already…”

He sighed and slowly rolled onto his back. “No.”

“Bad day?”

He didn’t respond. He just lay there and hoped that she would give up and go to sleep next to him while he stewed.

“Tell me about it.”

“Why would you want to hear about it? Sometimes it feels like I’m in therapy…”

“Spencer, quit deflecting.”

“My God, you _are_ a therapist, aren’t you?”

The room went quiet but he felt the weight of her stare on him. She had this way of compelling him through silence that seemed almost occult in nature. He held out as long as he could against it.

“We killed a man today… not much older than a boy, really. He made us do it.” He rolled towards her even though he couldn’t see her - he wanted to meet her eyes. “We had him backed into a corner. He could have surrendered, but he deliberately provoked us so that we’d shoot. He said he felt ‘destined’ to kill…”

“Why does this death bother you? He was a killer, after all.”

“Killing _bothered him_. You could see it weighing on him. He’d been raised to kill by his father… he was doing what he was taught. Perhaps his pathology was inevitable.”

He was quiet for a long time, and then he heard her shift against the pillows. He imagined her propping her head on a folded arm, lying directly across from him… waiting.

“But…” She prompted.

“ _But_ , he knew right from wrong and he knew what he was doing was evil. It dogged him… wore him down - you could see it. I have never seen such a haggard twenty-two year old before.”

“You… _felt_ for him.” He was relieved that he didn’t hear judgment in her whisper.

“I’ve seen a lot of unrepentant criminality in my job. It gives you a bleak outlook. But once in a while, you meet someone who… well, _saved_ isn’t exactly the right word for it, but maybe… someone who could be _redeemed_ in some small way. This man might have been redeemed, but he was so convinced that he was cursed by evil that he would rather die in a hail of bullets than even consider another possible outcome.”

Reid breathed in deeply and slowly let it out. He rolled supine once again and draped an arm over his blindfolded eyes.

“It makes me wonder… why we bother at all? Why do it if we can’t save a few of them? If our futures are just recompense for the past, then we can’t change anything. There are always more bodies - our ledger will always be dipped in red…”

Her finger landed against his cheekbone and traced the line of it lightly before disappearing again. He was getting better at not twitching when she did this - she liked his cheekbones, apparently. He heard the whisk of the sheets as she shifted a little closer. 

“Have you talked to anyone about this? Anyone on your team?”

“I talk to Prentiss and Morgan about some things… they each have different sympathies… and there’s Mom. But I never talk to anyone about everything.”

“You should talk to them. I think that they’d surprise you.”

“They’re all so armored, so strong…”

“And you aren’t?” She laughed but it disturbed him a little. “We are never just one thing, Spencer. I’ll bet that they feel as vulnerable as you most of the time.”

Reid thought on that for a long while.

“Emily…”

“What about her?”

“She has this way about her sometimes… she pulls stuff out of me, things that I never considered sharing. But then at other times she can be so dismissive, so glib…”

It was her turn to be quiet but he felt her shifting, as if nodding against her pillow.

“Everyone has trouble with trust at some point.” She breathed. “But I think there’s more about this killer that’s bothering you. You used the words ‘cursed’ and ‘inevitable’… you don’t strike me as a man who’s comfortable with the concept of fate…”

“Fate is superstition. An arbitrary acceptance of some facts, while dismissing others, in order to fit a series of events and thereby ascribing meaning to them through imagined causality.”

“That’s sorta what I said, Spence.” He could hear her smile and this time he knew that it was genuine. “Fate is superstition like… voodoo.”

He huffed angrily and pressed his arm against his blinded eyes until it was almost painful. “If I find her, what if I can’t convince her to lift the curse? What if it’s impossible to break? What’s the point in doing anything when our lives can hinge on one small moment that we can never go back and alter?”

She didn’t say anything and he knew she wouldn’t. Instead she placed her head against his chest, over his heart. He jerked at the sensation and swore silently as his heart rate accelerated to marathon speed, but his free hand draped around her shoulders, his fingers falling into her hair. This intimacy was so alien to him and yet he often responded to it without thinking. He craved it when it was missing, and half-feared it when it was present. Why she gave him any reassurance at all was a mystery to him. 

“You know, I was wrong before when I said that I don’t talk to anyone about everything. I talk to you - I tell you everything. Maybe it’s because you could be anyone… maybe it’s the darkness… it’s easier to confess in the dark.”

Her head moved against him, as if she was twisting to see his face.

“I’m sorry that it’s not the same for you. I can’t give you anything.”

“If you had been a different type of man, this whole situation could have been terrible - horrifying… But you’ve made it bearable. More than that, even. You’ve given me plenty, Spencer.”

She grasped the arm pressing into his blindfold and pulled it away. Gently unfolding his fist, she wormed her fingers between his and laid them out across his chest. He could feel her breath warming his knuckles.

“I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in the irrational acting as a counterweight to everything we understand. _When_ the curse is lifted, we can have this debate again. Things change because they have to, Spencer, and we adapt to them. We aren’t slaves to an endless domino line of causality - we make our own choices. Your dead killer might have been saved but he chose not to see that option - that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have tried to save him anyway. Don’t let the bullet that killed him kill your hope as well.”

“You would’ve made an excellent therapist.” He squeezed her shoulder knowing that it would press her closer to his heart.

“Oh, Mother would have _loved_ that.” She chuckled and buried her face against him.


	7. Chapter 7

“So, how is your girlfriend?” Diana Reid was sketching out notes for a phantom lecture on a napkin with a blunt pencil in the day room.

“Mom, she’s not my girlfriend. I explained all of this to you, remember?”

“Yes, yes. The woman who appears in your bed every night that you cannot see and do not know. ‘Girlfriend’ seems like an easier term.”

“It’s not like you to be imprecise.”

“Spencer,” Diana looked at him with a disturbingly direct stare. “Bandying around precise descriptions of this situation of yours might land you in here with a suite next to mine.”

Reid swallowed hard. His mother’s grasp on reality was worse than tenuous and yet whenever it did possess her, her perspective was unflinchingly honest. If the schizophrenia hadn’t fractured her between worlds, she would’ve been a force to be reckoned with.

“You’re saying I’m crazy.”

“Absolutely not. You are the victim of magic.”

“How does that _not_ sound crazy, Mom?”

“Well, for one thing, you aren’t imagining Napoleon in your bed every night whispering about the government’s plans to infect the drinking supply with alien parasites or about how you have to kill the mail man because he’s Cardinal Richelieu in disguise.”

Reid held his head in his hands.

“You aren’t like me, Spencer.” Diana abandoned her notes and reached for her son. “I knew it the moment that they put you into my arms: you would be fine and that you would also be extraordinary. Being cursed is definitely extraordinary.”

“Mom…”

“Baudelaire is sitting across from us pointing out flaws in my notes for next week’s lecture - _that’s_ crazy, Spencer. What’s happening to you is something else. Only those who refuse to see it would call it ‘crazy’.”

“Mom,” Reid whispered. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Because you are pretending that you don’t understand it, or because you don’t want it to end?”

Reid’s face drained of colour. Diana smiled.

“It’s been almost a year and a half, Spencer. You’re not obtuse. There’s something in this solitude that you two share… it’s romantic, as all of the best kinds of magic are.”

Reid looked away and was saved from further emotional stripping by his phone.

“Spencer, you know how I feel about those…”

“I have to take it - it’s Garcia.” He got up and moved away from Diana.

_Hey, Thin Man, how’s Sin City?_

“Happily debauching and bankrupting all those who enter the city limits. What’s up - do we have a case?”

_Yes and no. Pollock Penitentiary just informed me that Samedi LeGris died last night. His wife was present._

His hands were shaking. “What happened? Was she detained?”

_Autopsy says ‘natural causes’ which is plausible as he was old and had a bunch of things wrong with him, besides the religious homicidal rage… His wife showed up after he died. Made quite a scene when she found out too. The prison officials were in a hurry to get her off the premises - they didn’t know that NOPD were looking for her on our behalf. She’s in the wind again._

Reid closed his eyes tightly and clamped down on the panic surging inside him. What about _her_? What if Samedi’s death causes his wife to seek revenge? Maybe the curse wasn’t enough anymore. Imelda LeGris seemed like the type to espouse the ‘blood for blood’ credo. He had to get home - suddenly nothing seemed more important.

“I’ll be on the first flight back to D.C.”

_Not to Louisiana? That’s the other thing I called about… Remember J.J.’s friend Will LaMontange?_

“You mean her boyfriend.”

_Shush you! She still thinks that’s a secret… Anyway, he says that he has a lead for us. He seemed pretty eager to help out on this one._

Reid stood still for a moment, considering. Then he shook himself, trying to clear his mind of everything but the quickest route to the airport and the possibility of getting a standby seat to D.C. before nightfall.

“Thanks, Garcia. I owe you for this.”

_Payment shall be waived in lieu of your safe return and a red velvet cupcake, Doctor._

“Deal.” Reid smiled and hung up. He glanced back at Diana who seemed to mirror his mood.

“Go. Quickly.” She whispered.

\----

Everything stood in his way. Plane delays, luggage retrieval, infernal D.C. traffic… He torpedoed through his apartment in the dark, slamming doors and dropping things carelessly on his path to the bedroom. He barely reminded himself to remove his gun and kick off his shoes before snapping the blindfold over his eyes and lying out on top of the sheets.

“Please, please, please…”

Minutes passed silently but she didn’t appear. He considered that perhaps this was an aspect of the curse; he was feigning sleep in order to summon her. He sighed squeezing his eyes tightly and focused on relaxing. A paradox quickly developed whereby his anxiety about the inability to relax created surges of adrenaline that made it physically impossible to sleep. Besides, he didn’t _want_ to sleep. 

_Let her be alright. Wherever she is, let her not be alone._

What if she was gone? She had never _not_ shown up before. If Imelda’s grief had stretched out and snapped her in two, how would he ever know? Wouldn’t that be the most fitting end to the curse? The memory of her would thrash against the corners of his mind, but he’d never actually _know_ and he’d never be able to grieve. He closed his eyes tighter behind the blindfold. His panic was turning into terror: panic is workable but terror calcifies. The blackness pressed in on him and his fingers itched to remove the mask. But he couldn’t, not if there was even a possibility of hope… He rolled to his side and curled into a ball. 

_Please, please, please… Come back. I won’t ask questions… I’ll be good…_

The darkness bellowed in his ears. Alone, there were no possibilities in the blackness, only emptiness. It was worse than a monster stalking you, or the nightmares that lived in the corners of your eyes: just nothing, forever. His hands reached across the bed and gripped the sheets, pulling them to his chest as they popped free of their hospital corners. They held a hint of her, as if she’d stepped away for a moment.

“I didn’t even know your name.” He hid his face in the sheet to stop him from saying anything else.


	8. Chapter 8

He was split in two: one part of him wanted to go to Louisiana immediately, and the other couldn’t leave that room. He’d slept a little but mostly he’d pass between ebbs of panic and the realization that time had passed and he remained alone. Morning came and he stayed in bed, eyes resolutely closed, just in case. He had never tried to summon her in daylight, but he’d give anything a shot now. By midday, he’d emailed Hotch and told him that he was taking an emergency leave of absence. Predictably, Hotch was concerned and wanted details, but when Reid used the ‘personal issue’ excuse, he backed down. Reid had no doubt that his superior was envisioning all kinds of nightmare scenarios, but he didn’t care. He’d deal with it all later.

By the time dusk fell, he had worked himself into a caffeine-fueled anxiety dysphoria. He was physically incapable of lying still, so he rummaged through his cabinets until he found the unopened bottle of scotch that Rossi had given to him two Christmases ago. He hated the taste, but he swallowed three shots in a row, sat down in his favorite chair and _waited_. The effect took about ten minutes to kick in and twenty minutes after that, he felt considerably looser. He heaved himself from the chair and stumbled to his bedroom. This time, he felt that routine would be beneficial, so he took his time and changed clothes. He sat on the edge of the mattress and reverently tied on his blindfold. _This is going to work._ He lay back and allowed the scotch to swirl his balance enough to make it seem as if he were momentarily floating in the sheets. 

“You’re early tonight.”

His head snapped sideways at the sound of her voice, and he pulled her to him so that they met in an abrupt kiss. She went rigid against him, but his lips continued pulling at hers, slowly softening them. Her hands landed against his chest but didn’t push away; his dug into her clothes trying to anchor her there for good.

“Samedi is dead.” He breathed against her cheek.

“I know.” She was muffled by his fierce grip on her.

“You know? How-”

“Don’t.”

“Sorry…”

He turned his face towards her, kissing the line of her cheekbone lightly as he tried to calm his heart. She was real - he could touch her, taste her, _feel_ her - that was as real as it got. He felt her breath against his neck; it seemed to be coming a bit faster now.

“Spencer…”

“I flew back from Nevada when I heard. I waited all night…” 

Her hands shifted from pushing to gripping.

“When you didn’t come, I thought… maybe…”

She sighed and then wrapped her arms around him. Her legs tangled with his; he could feel the coolness of her bare calves and heard the whisk of her skirt as it slid up between them.

“I wasn’t in D.C. I only got back this afternoon. Maybe that distance thing works both ways…”

“I don’t care about this thing’s rules anymore.” He found her lips again, before she could tell him no or give him a line about ruining a friendship. “You told me that I need to _act_ more, and I’m going to. I’m going to Louisiana to hunt down Imelda LeGris and make her lift this curse. She can have anything else in return - there are plenty of ways to make me miserable.”

“But perhaps none with the kind of poetry that this offers…” She whispered into his mouth.

He pressed into her mouth fiercely at her words; she was right, this situation now possessed the cruel irony that Imelda had only hinted at back in New Orleans. He pulled against her lips, again and again, until she breathed into him and he tasted her tongue. He wondered if she minded the hint of scotch, but then she moaned against him and all he wanted was to bury himself in that fragile plea.

“I was selfish. I might’ve freed you months ago…” His lips brushed against hers as he spoke. “But I can’t live with letting you die because I’ve become afraid of being alone. It never would’ve come to this if I had acted in the first place. The possibility of you dropping dead somewhere because of me - the never knowing - it’s all too much now. I don’t even know your damned name! I’m gonna fix this and you can get on with your life.”

She let out a frustrated noise and then her lips caught his. She pulled him into her and when he eventually followed, she rewarded him with a deeper, stronger kiss. Her lips parted and he moved to fill that void, his hands reaching into her hair and cradling her neck. Their lips held and parted, gasps filling the tiny gaps between separation and reconnection. Their small noises seemed deafening to him: a soft note of want, the skimming of his fingers across her clothes in search of skin, the pop of a button released from the eyelet of his shirt, and then another, and another…

He pulled back, blind, overwrought, and confused. She spoke before he had a chance to ask the question that must have been written across his face.

“I’m getting on with my life, Spencer.”

“But when we met…”

“It wasn’t like this. Now it is.”

He took a deep breath. “If I never told you how much I wanted you - before, when we knew each other - I was a fool.”

It was easier to say it in the darkness where the only things that mattered were sound and touch. He didn’t have to parse her expression or fear seeing his own inadequacies reflected in her face. She pressed her face against his so that he could _feel_ her smile.

“Apology accepted. And, ditto.”

Another shirt button popped, and then another. He ran his hands down her sides until he felt the hem of her skirt and then smoothed it up her thighs until his fingertips skimmed the lower edge of her underwear. She pushed into him: mouth first, then breasts and hips. Her fingers fumbled with the last of his shirt buttons, but once she mastered them she pushed the shirt off his shoulders, running her nails along his spine as she pulled him to her. 

He pulled away from her mouth feeling dizzy. He rolled them over so that he was on top, his arms propping him away from her as if he hoped to see something through his blindfold. He settled himself between her thighs, her hitched skirt pushing against him as he pressed into her. 

“What’s the matter?” She whispered.

“I thought you were dead.” He cringed a little when his voice cracked.

“Spence, I’m sorry…”

He shook his head and reached out a hand until his fingertips found her lips. He imagined their colour, how they’d be bruised and tender, and how he might feel a faint echo of her racing heartbeat through them. For him.

“I’ve never been so happy to be alive as I am _right now_ , in this moment with you.” He kissed those lips that he had painted in his mind. “I know that I said you should never tell me who you are - after the curse has been broken - to just go on with your life… but… tell me. After I come back from Louisiana, tell me, because if you don’t I’ll never be sure that you survived.”

She nodded against his cheek breathing hard. He thought that she tried to speak but something stopped her, making a strange clicking in her throat. He sat up, pulling her with him, and sank into her mouth. She pressed against him everywhere but he didn’t twitch or startle at it. His instinct drove him in the opposite direction, for more contact. They divested themselves of their remaining clothes, leaving the crisp hiss of fabric behind in favor of a softer murmuring. His hands moved everywhere as she grasped and licked and sucked. He wanted a map of her inside him - after all, _she_ had the benefit of sight and he did not. His knowledge of her was limited to blind caresses on sleepless nights. A tiny scar on her right hip, the softness of her wrists, the curve that her back made as he followed it down to her waist... Small things became revelations like the feel of her breast’s lower curve against his lips and how she gasped in surprise at it, or how an accidental brush of his hand across her nipple raised goosebumps along her neck. 

She grew impatient. They twisted against each other, she trying to marshal him and he trying to keep her close. He didn’t want to let her go for any reason. His mouth, his hands, his cock, his heart all bent to this purpose. Eventually, she settled him back against the headboard and eased down onto him until they were face to face, as close as they’d ever been. Like they were telling each other secrets… Her scent and her warmth were everywhere now - more than just what he had come to recognize as ‘her’. He knew it from the time she had appeared naked and confused next to him, but this time it was for _him_. He moved in her and she rocked in response, bending her face into him. He held her as close as he dared while they worked at their rhythm, the bedsprings ticking when he dug his heels in for more grip. Her back twisted under his arms as she worked for a better angle. She moaned against his chest, his neck, and then into his mouth as she moved around slipping in and out of his hands. 

The springs creaked and the sheets slid under them as they mumbled and clung to one another. He moved further under her and she loudly cried out his name. He was dimly aware that he had never heard her voice above a whisper before. He used her roughly after that pressing so hard with his heels and against the headboard that he almost lifted them both from the mattress as he thrusted. She struggled to free herself from his arms, canting backwards for a better position. He hated the separation but the fluidity of her hips writhing against and then matching his rhythm quickly made him forget everything else. She cried out, fits of half-formed thoughts, like a drowning woman gasping through the surface before sinking below again. His mind suddenly created an image of what they might look like together in the twilight of his room, bodies flattened by shadows and merged into a heaving tangle of limbs trying to consume one another - desperately trying to become one. The thought stretched him thin, taunt, and he drove into her with his fingers, his cock, and his tongue without consideration. She squeezed and shivered in his hands crying out his name loudly and clearly. When he came, part of him was angry that he couldn’t call her by name. Instead, he held her fiercely in silence, caged by his arms and legs as she sunk deep into his pelvis.

She whispered his name again. He felt his jaw tighten as he squeezed her closer.

Tomorrow he would go to Louisiana to finish this and then she would tell him her name. After that, he would have everything he needed.


	9. Chapter 9

Will LaMontagne met Reid at the NOPD detective bureau. He knew the profiler well enough to have a large cup of sickly sweet coffee waiting for him when he arrived.

“Ya look like you could really use this. Rough one last night?” Will always asked personal questions as if he was talking about the weather. It was disarming to say the least.

“In a manner of speaking.” Reid slurped his coffee and looked away.

“Well, drink up then - we got one helluva ride in front of us. Gotta go almost clear to the Gulf.”

“That’s out of your jurisdiction. You must have a lot of faith in this lead…”

“Well, that’s partly why I need a buddy with federal authority.” Will smiled. “’Sides, I been chasin’ down leads for almost eight months now - this is the best one so far…”

 _Eight months?_ Reid eyed Will again. The man looked terrible: circles under his eyes, a scrabbly half-beard, a creased suit _just_ on the side of acceptability… Assuming that his appearance had anything to do with his zeal to find Imelda LeGris, this man was invested. Since Will had no standing in the original LeGris case, it wasn’t hard to imagine what motivated him.

“I really appreciate the help, Will. Nobody from NOPD seemed too interested in this until you called Garcia. I’m a little surprised that you didn’t contact J.J. though… since she’s the point of contact for most LEOs and our office…”

Will’s worn face revealed a flash of panic before settling back into an indifferent mask. Reid cringed inwardly. No matter how much they wanted to keep their relationship a secret, panic didn’t seem like an appropriate response to her name; Will was scared for her. _Oh no, J.J. …_

Reid placed his half-finished mug on the nearest desk. “We should get going. The sooner we catch up to Imelda, the better.”

\----

The original lead had led to a woman who had gone to Imelda for a love potion to make her wandering husband return to her. The woman’s pinched expression, general disagreeability, and explosion of uncontrolled children marauding through her trailer suggested that he hadn’t remained for too long. Reid struggled with her patois, but it became obvious that Imelda’s ‘potion’ stopped working once the money ran out. The scorned woman gave them a last know whereabouts - now almost six months old - and a warning to steer clear of the ‘LeGris witch’ if at all possible. As Will and Reid walked back towards the car in the sweltering ninety percent humidity, Will confirmed what Reid was beginning to suspect. While Samedi was a powerful voodoo doctor with sway over life and death, Imelda specialized in matters of love. In many parishes she was more feared than her husband; ruined love could shred your life as effectively as the threat of poverty or death. Reid now knew that first hand. 

They dogged the six month-old address down - found it predictably abandoned - and were given another name by a curious neighbor. That name led to another, and then another, until a pattern of itinerancy and fraud started to come into full view. Three days of freeways, fleabag motels, and swampy encampments of the South’s forgotten underclass led them clear across lower Louisiana, but no closer to their prey. Reid tried to blame the heat for the trill of panic that had been slowly building inside him from the moment he’d set foot back in the NOPD squad room. Every night that he was away from home was a night in which he was unsure of her fate. He held this insane notion that if he was _there_ , he could protect her, even though finding Imelda probably did more to bolster that theory than lying blindfolded in the dark did.

“I don’t know how you can stand living in this heat.” Reid huffed and scrubbed at the sweat under his shirt collar.

Will didn’t look over, just continued driving with one hand braced against the driver’s side window holding his forehead. “Well, the way I see it is that it’s good preparation for livin’ in Hell, ya know?”

Reid stared at him. He couldn’t tell if the man was joking or not.

“And what if you’re already in Hell?”

“I guess that there ain’t no more surprises then.” Will chuckled and then glanced at Reid. “And it would explain a few things.”

“I haven’t come across any good explanation for the actions of Imelda LeGris so far.”

“This is voodoo country, Doctor. There might not _be_ an explanation. You might wanna prepare yerself for that.” 

Reid focused on the road in front of him. “That is unacceptable to me.”

“Yeah, I know.” Will sounded a thousand miles away. “Me too.”


	10. Chapter 10

On the fourth day, they found themselves within fifty miles of New Orleans again driving through parish backwaters with dirt roads that didn’t have names or appear on any map. They were hunting down another possible location tip, and Reid knew that if this one didn’t pan out, that there was nowhere else to look. 

Will had grown quieter in the last day barely saying enough to confirm driving directions. For once Reid didn’t feel the need to fill the emptiness with nervous chatter; he completely understood the man’s need for silence. It was the last inner barrier separating him from the panic that was laying siege to him. Reid could only assume that Will felt as he did: that every mile covered was a frustrating obstacle overcome - that every hour spent in pursuit added to the terror of leaving a loved one unprotected. He wanted to tell Will that he wasn’t alone in this but he feared the repercussions if he did so. When the last lead had resulted in failure, Will broke his silence with an impressive display of curses. As he leaned his body against the hood of his car, Reid laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard. Will faced him, his expression a mix of fear and total exhaustion, and blinked back whatever he was just barely holding on to. Reid saw the recognition in his eyes and knew that Will saw the same thing in him. He stood straight and nodded at Reid, a small amount of his strength restored to him. Reid knew that Will would never ask for details, it was enough to realize that he wasn’t suffering alone.

After several wrong turns, they finally found what they had been seeking. Another dissatisfied customer had pointed them towards an abandoned church half reclaimed by a swamp that eventually fed into the Mississippi River. It had been a slave church back in antebellum days, and later became an infamous lynching site for the KKK. Apparently, it was a favored spot for Imelda - she told people that it had “good conjurin’ juju” because of all the lives lost on it. Reid didn’t know about that but he couldn’t deny that the place had a melancholy stillness to it that sent a shiver up his spine in broad daylight. The church sat on the very edge of the floodplain, its wooden planks bleached by the sun and stained with rot and corruption. It reminded Reid of Imelda herself: sagging and empty, weighed down by the evil of its own history. A beat up Impala was parked in front of it, fresh mud tracks led from it back to the access road. Imelda was not alone.

Will and Reid exited their car and flanked the building. With a silent nod, they both drew their weapons for the first time on this odyssey. Reid reached a boarded up window and peered into the building. A small fire in a cauldron set in what appeared to be the main nave of the church illuminated the gloom. Light flickered and revealed Imelda’s leathery face as she rocked in and out of the cauldron’s smoke chanting in a singsong voice. A shadowy figure sat opposite her in the nave and there appeared to be a smaller figure lying on the floor in front of them. Imelda’s chanting increased in volume and the supine figure began to writhe and twitch. Imelda spat into the fire and called out something in a clear voice, like a demand. She then produced a dagger from the folds of her dress and held it above the undulating figure.

_Shit!_

Reid had a precarious shot that he knew he’d never make but just as he was thinking over his options, he heard Will.

“Hold it right there! NOPD!”

The crouching silhouette leapt to his feet and made a break for a broken window out into the swamp beyond without looking back to Imelda or the person on the floor.

“Freeze!” Will bellowed.

“No! T’ain’t done yet!” Imelda yelled at the escaping figure. “You ruin it…”

Reid ran around the church to see Will bolt towards the swamp.

“Will!”

“Get her, Reid!” He called over his shoulder. “Don’t let her get away!”

Will disappeared behind the church leaving Reid to decide whether to back up his partner or face down Imelda alone. He didn’t give it much thought instead bracing his weapon and striding into the church’s gloom. Imelda was hurriedly packing supplies into a bag when Reid appeared.

“Enough, Imelda, it’s over.” 

“Boy? Dat you?” She squinted.

Reid held her in his sightline as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He looked at the figure on the floor. It was a girl and she was no longer moving. Reid moved in quickly, keeping his gun on Imelda, and brushed his fingers along the girl’s neck to locate a pulse. She was cold and clammy to the touch. Reid recoiled.

“She’s dead!”

“Sure is, chere.” Imelda smiled.

“But she was moving!”

“Tryin’ ta bring her back, but you messed dat up. Mebbe she been dead too long anyway… you never know ‘til you try.”

Reid felt himself gag and tried to push the instinct away. _Necromancy._ He shivered and remembered that he was here to save the living, not the dead.

“Was this a dry run for Samedi? Would you try to bring him back?”

Imelda grinned and lazily slid her finger along the edge of her knife.

“You know why I’m here, Imelda. You know what I want.”

Imelda’s smile faded a little, as if she was recalling a long forgotten memory. “You ain’t a boy no more, are ya? A man grown up inside yer body - he lookin’ out tru yer eyes now. You seen things you wouldn’t believe, and yet… you do now, don’t ya?” 

“Lift the curse.” He said simply.

“No.” She looked pointedly at his gun.

He grimaced and slowly holstered his .38. “I’ll give you whatever you want. My life-”

“T’aint nothing you have dat I want, boy.” She spat as she waved her knife in his direction. “Your life won’t settle de debt… Samedi is gone. Ain’t never comin’ back.”

“But the woman is innocent.”

“You think so, eh?” Imelda’s laughter echoed through the old rotten church. “Not now… not that she made you _feel_ somet’ing, right chere?”

“She isn’t responsible for what happened to Samedi!” He took a step towards her in anger and then stopped as she waved the knife again. He felt helpless against this frail old wretch of a woman.

“Mebbe, but she give me somet’ing… she give me power ta hurt you.”

“Then hurt me! Kill _me_ instead!”

Imelda shook her head slowly. “Death too quick. You need to live wit da loss, like I do for Samedi.”

Imelda turned the knife blade towards herself and cackled, showing off a gap-toothed grin. “Dis is better… I be wit Samedi and you still suffer, ma chere. If I die, she die.”

Imelda quickly swiped the blade across her throat. It was so quick and casual that Reid thought she had mimed it for some reason. The old crone’s grin took on a rapturous delight, and then a crimson line appeared. A second later, the line had become a flood that was staining the front of her dress.

“NO!” Reid grabbed the knife and tossed it away, then clamped his hand over her throat as Imelda sagged into his body sending them both crashing to the floor. “Nonononono! Don’t die on me… don’t you dare… Will! WILL!”

Imelda continued to smile as her life seeped out of her. She tried to pull Reid’s hand away, but her attempts grew weaker and weaker. He wadded up his jacket to staunch the flow, panic in full command of his actions. He became aware that he was babbling at her and that she was laughing silently at him, her throat pumping out her amusement all over them both. In the end, she stared up at him beatifically as he cursed and cried out for Will to pull the car around. Her anger ran out with her blood, staining her clothes and his beneath hers, but leaving her face horrifically at peace.

“Now you know… de sacrifice of blood…” She gurgled one last time before her eyes went dead.


	11. Chapter 11

He stumbled into his apartment exhausted and wearing another man’s shirt. Will had been kind enough to give him one _not_ covered in blood for his plane ride home. Reid hadn’t had the chance to thank him; the other man seemed eager to make a phone call. 

He didn’t bother with the lights, or with food even though it had been four days since he’d eaten anything that hadn’t come out of a vending machine. He wandered into his bedroom and stripped down on the way to the bathroom. The shower improved his smell and eased the ache of travel from his muscles, but it didn’t lift the shadow from him. 

Imelda LeGris was dead. Whatever secrets she held died with her. Perhaps more than just secrets…

He let the spray run over his face until the hot water gave out. By then he figured that he had washed away most of the emotions that he couldn’t bear to acknowledge, and he was looking forward to being numb for a while. He changed into clean clothes but then realized that he hadn’t changed the sheets from the night before he left. He stared at the twisted bedclothes and knew that his numbness wasn’t bulletproof. He changed the sheets quickly trying not to breathe in at all.

He lay down leaving plenty of space to his left out of habit. He didn’t put on the blindfold; no one was showing up tonight.


	12. Chapter 12

He was relieved to see J.J. in the office on Monday morning. She looked almost radiant when she hurried up to his desk and gave him the smile she reserved for the two of them. It was hard to tell, but her eyes looked puffy. 

“I spoke to Will LaMontagne over the weekend.” She murmured.

He almost rolled his eyes at her persistence with this fiction.

“He said that you went down there to help resolve the LeGris matter. He really appreciated it.” She leaned in a little closer. “And so do I.”

He looked at her closely. Her eyes were rimmed in pink but she seemed genuinely happy - almost relieved.

“Are you okay, J.J.? Really?”

She smiled again and for a brief second he thought that she might cry right there in the bullpen. She reached for him and then pulled her hand away with an apology across her face: _sorry, forgot about the ‘no touch’ rule._

“Yeah, I’m great actually. You?”

Realization hit him in the chest. J.J. had survived something just as he had, but they hadn’t survived the same thing. Part of him had wondered about it the moment that Garcia mentioned Will, but there was nothing here in this moment between them that hadn’t always existed. 

“I’m still here - that’s good I suppose.” His eyes warned her not to push on the subject. “This trip to Louisiana convinced me that we shouldn’t put things off - you never know what might happen to you. I’m pretty sure that Will feels the same way.”

He let the statement stand for itself but hoped that there was an urgent phone call to New Orleans in her future. Her jaw nearly dropped as he reached for her hand and brushed a quick kiss over it. In fact, everyone’s jaw nearly dropped if the sudden silence in the bullpen was any indication.

“Is there a briefing this morning?” He stood and collected some case files under his arm.

“Yeah. In ten minutes.” She arched an eyebrow at him but did nothing else.

“See you there.” He smiled and walked away.

\----

The briefing led to a local case. Most of the team went to the last crime scene with DCPD while he and Garcia coordinated logistics and forensics from Quantico. Reid was deep in one of his intricate geographic profiles when the call came from Hotch: the UnSub had been caught at a routine traffic stop just outside the capital. He hadn’t even bothered to clean the blood off the tools in his trunk. It was an ignominious end to the case that left Reid feeling even more off balance and distressed than before. Some days were just like that: sometimes they just _ended_. Hotch had told him to go home, but Reid sank into his case notes and final paperwork afraid of what lay beyond it. He could spend hours lost in his tiny details and let the world fade around him. It seemed like the best course of action. He had already spent three days alone and broken in his apartment…

He didn’t know how much time had passed until he heard her voice.

“Hey.”

He looked up from his lone desk lamp in the darkened bullpen to see Prentiss walking towards him. The light played across her strangely, making the edges of her shine as she moved. It must have been raining outside, he thought.

“You’re still here.”

“You know me: nothing to go home to.” He yawned and stretched as he stood. Perhaps he’d finished hours ago - he couldn’t remember - but couldn’t face going back to his apartment. However, sleeping at the B.A.U. wasn’t an option either. “I was just about to leave though.”

She went still, just outside of the halo made from his desk lamp and the lack of movement caught his attention. He couldn’t see her face clearly but he made an effort to seek out her eyes.

“You okay, Prentiss?”

“I heard that you went to Louisiana and caught up with LeGris’s widow.”

“She’s not a widow anymore.” He mumbled.

“You got to her before I could.”

She stepped forward into the light and he saw how exhausted she was. She hadn’t seemed that way in the briefing earlier.

“Jesus, I guess she got all of us with that curse…” He rubbed his face. “I thought that it was just me and J.J.”

“J.J.?”

“Yeah. Well, she didn’t come out and say it but it’s pretty obvious; she’s so relieved. At least you admitted it.”

He looked at her and cleared his throat.

“You know, Prentiss, you’re pretty awesome that way: just calling a spade a spade, I mean. You’ve always given me good advice, even when I didn’t want to hear it. I’ve never told you how much I appreciate that…”

She just stared at him and it was unnerving. He started shuffling back and forth, contemplating his shoes.

“What I’m saying is that you’re a good friend. I ought to trust you more… let you in…”

“Everyone has trouble with trust at some point.” She whispered and his head shot up.

They stared at each other for a long time. He kept trying to think of something to say but whenever he opened his mouth, the thought vanished. He focused on breathing until another plan came to him.

“It changes things, doesn’t it?” She closed her eyes briefly. “Knowing who I am…”

“Yes. I don’t see how it couldn’t.”

“You were hoping that it was J.J.”

“No.” He stepped towards her. Just a step. “The only thing I hoped for was that she… _you_ were still alive somewhere. Why didn’t you contact me? It’s been almost three days…”

“I dunno.” She shook her head sending little sprinkles into the darkness, lighting up as they fell. “I was scared that it wasn’t really over, I guess… I meant to pull you aside this morning but then I saw you with J.J.”

“She’s with Will LaMontagne.” He snapped, suddenly irritated by the scene with J.J. earlier.

“I know.” She bit back. “But it made me wonder if you really wanted to know after all. In the end, I couldn’t ignore the promise that I made to you. You said that you wanted to know, so I’ve told you.”

She lifted her hands in a ‘that’s it’ gesture and backed away. He reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her. It didn’t seem right to handle her in that way until he reminded himself of what his hands already knew of this woman… of what they knew of _each other_ … They were both in darkness now and he could see just the barest outline of her face in the lamp light.

“Did it ever occur to you that my current disbelief stems from the perception that you would never, ever feel _that way_ about me?”

“I didn’t. I told you that.”

“So…?”

“ _So,_ you made me see you differently, Spencer!” She was vibrating in his grip and he wondered if it was anger or fear, or both.

He pulled her closer and gently cupped her face with his other hand. He wanted to seek out that little scar on her hip once more. He wanted to kiss her wrists and that spot behind her ear that made her shake all over. He wanted to listen to her moving in the dark…

“Imelda was wrong when she cursed me: I wasn’t in love - not even close. But I am now.” 

She tried to turn away from his gaze, into his palm but he held her still. _Your eyes are brown. Your hair is dark. I know you… I know you._ They were still in shadow but he could make out the unease that crept into her face. She might have spent the last year and a half staring at him, but it was different now that he could stare back. 

“Spencer…”

“I love that woman in the dark. Tell me that she’s really you, Emily. Tell me that she’ll let me see her that way now that I’m no longer blind.”

She couldn’t move so she shuttered her eyes denying him a way in. His expression melted into a quiet mask of misery as his hand moved from her arm, grasped hers and folded them into his chest.

“ _Tell me_ , Em… call a spade a spade…” He squeezed his eyes shut and waited.

He felt her cheek move against his hand. He opened his eyes and watched her slowly turn and press her lips into his palm. Standing still and holding his breath, he watched her hold that kiss against his hand until her fingers wrapped around his. Her lips parted and he felt breath ghost his palm, warm and unsteady in the tiny space between them. His fingers curled under her jaw and drew her in a little closer - he wanted to bring her back to him and was rewarded when her dark eyes flicked up to his.

“She’s who I want to be. Sometimes you don’t know who you are until someone else shows you.” She whispered.

“What did I show you, exactly?”

“That laying yourself open to someone else doesn’t make you fragile. That challenging the things that have always defined you can have unexpected benefits. I know how hard it was to share your privacy with me… to let me touch you… your generosity of spirit is so immense, Spencer, that it trumped your phobias. You leave me in awe sometimes.”

She held him in the dark for a moment and then leaned in to kiss him. He felt the dampness of her coat leak through his dress shirt; sprinkles from her hair tickled his face as she moved against him. Her tongue brushed his lips softly - once, twice - and as he opened to her he felt as if she was clicking into place inside him. As if she filled a spot that he had never known was empty until now. A sudden surge of realization rippled through him: she was safe… free at last. And she was here, with him… _Emily Prentiss …with him_. His hands slid into her hair and pulled her firmly into him.

“Beautiful, seriously unattainable Emily Prentiss…” He gasped when he finally let them come up for air.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just can’t believe that this is happening.” He kissed the corners of her mouth.

“Believe it. It’s been happening almost every night for well over a year.” He felt her smile against his lips. “So, what now?”

“Well, I think that a date might be in order. You know… with the lights on and stuff?”

“What a radical idea. Tell me more.” She brushed her lips against his as she spoke.

“There will probably be a certain amount of awkward conversation that will amp up my natural anxiety level until it reaches such a point that I inadvertently blurt out how much you mean to me, that I can’t sleep well without you, and that I want to be the father of your children. At some point shortly thereafter, I’ll probably be unable to maintain eye contact and all appreciable conversation will come to a grinding halt. I mean… if past experience is any indication…”

“That _does_ sound awkward.” She paused and then moved her lips to his ear. “Do you think it would go more smoothly if we were in the dark?”

He hesitated. He was being mostly serious about his social anxiety and he wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “I dunno… maybe.”

“So, maybe we should go to a _really_ dimly lit restaurant, then. Or the movies.” She wasn’t laughing, but he heard the smile in her voice. It made him relax a fraction. “And it’s okay if you blurt out things… it might encourage me to do the same.”

He held her much closer then, her damp head tucked up under his chin. He rocked her slowly, back and forth, as if trying to lull both of them to sleep.

“Spence? Can I blurt something out right now?”

“Sure.”

“I … I don’t like sleeping alone anymore.”

He stopped rocking them and pulled away from her so that he could see the outline of her face in the dim lamplight.

“What are you saying?”

“I think that going on a date is a great idea, and I’m kinda looking forward to seeing how we work out as… a couple. Trust me - I don’t usually feel that way. But…”

“But what?”

“But I was wondering if I could… still sleep at your place… you know, until we see how this all pans out. It’s really unusual, I know, and it’s a lot to ask… I just _feel_ better when I know you’re next to me. If… if you agree, I promise that I won’t touch you.”

“What if I want you to touch me?” He was finding it hard to breathe suddenly.

“Well… then I wouldn’t have to worry about making a promise that I couldn’t possibly keep.” She found his hand and slid her fingers in between his. He didn’t twitch - he didn’t even think about it.

He stared at her for a long time and squeezed her fingers into his. Then he bent and retrieved his messenger bag before turning out the desk lamp. He kissed her softly in the absolute dark of the bullpen.

“Let’s go home.” He said as he blindly pulled her towards the elevators.


End file.
